Winter's Awakening: The Metahumans Emerge (Winter's Saga #1) (18 page)

“Alik, are you okay? Alik? Talk to me!” Evan was scrambling past the rows of seats to climb to the front. His brother hadn’t answered. “Alik!” Evan saw right away what had happened. His harness had held his brother perfectly so he wouldn’t hit the steering wheel or the front windshield upon impact. But what he couldn’t have predicted was that a steel pipe from the wall of the building would burst through the driver’s side window. Alik had a pretty good gash on his left temple. He was slumped over as far as the harness would allow.

First thing Evan did was check for a pulse. There was one. His brother was breathing. He could tell because his chest was rising and falling. “Alik!” Evan began undoing his harness while trying to rouse him. “Alik! Come on, Al, we gotta get out of here. Mom’s waiting. We gotta go!” With that, Evan unbuckled the last of the straps and caught Alik before he fell out of his seat.

For a moment, he sat there holding his unconscious brother, whispering pleas for him to wake up. Evan felt like a very small child, lost without his big brother. And just when he was about to burst into tears he had never shed before, Alik moaned.

“Alik! Alik a pipe hit you on the head when the truck crashed through the door. You were bleeding considerably through the three-inch gash, but I’ve already got that to stop with localized pressure. How do you feel? Can you walk?” Evan’s relief was obvious.

“I feel like I got hit in the head with a pipe, but I’m okay. Come on, we gotta get moving.”

Carefully, they crawled out of the wrecked truck, and for the first time, looked at their surroundings. There was no one to be seen. Exactly as they’d hoped.

All the explosives were strategically placed so the few people still in the building at this time of day would rush away from the blasts and out exit doors on the opposite side of the compound from where the boys entered with the truck.

“Now we gotta find mom,” Alik said as if ticking off a to-do list.

The building, though smaller than the main office, was still three stories tall. They were depending on Meg to meet them there so they could use her senses to help with the search. The explosions were her signal to run.

Chapter 52 Meg Versus Gavil

“What in the world is going on?” Williams ran to the window just in time to see several of his beautiful white buildings burst with clouds of smoke and dust.

While Gavil was distracted, I took the opportunity to deliver a solid round house kick to the side of his head. He spun and flew across the room. Seething anger shot from his eyes as he crouched recovering.

It registered for a moment how little that affected him. An ordinary person would have been knocked-out cold, easily.

I dismissed Gavil from my mind for just one moment and focused on Williams. He was still ranting about what was happening outside and hadn’t even noticed the battle had already begun right here.

Just as I was reaching out to spin the doctor around so I could look him in the eye when I broke his nose, something hit me.

I flew across the room and crashed into a chair before landing hard on the floor. What in the heck was that? I thought to myself rolling over and trying to recover. It felt like a metal baseball bat hitting my ribs.

Gavil was watching me with amusement. He held nothing close to a bat in his hand. What hit me was his fist. Oh, crud. This guy was super strong.

I stood, grimacing, and tried to shake off the pain. I had to look for a weakness. He got in the ready position again and held perfectly still watching every move I made. I was as strong as three men myself, but this guy was as strong as Alik, and that’s saying something.

Just then he rushed and grabbed me by the throat. His hands were like steel. Stepping around his leg I shifted my weight and knocked him off balance. He landed on the floor dragging me with him. He blocked my throat strike and threw me with brute force. I regained my footing, wincing with pain.

Without missing a beat, he took a running start at me and was setting up for some hand-to-hand, so I braced myself. For every punch, I blocked, again and again, faster and faster. He stood in the ready and attacked with strike after strike. I refused to back down, but even blocking his blows hurt tremendously.

I finally had to change the pace. Ducking, I swiped my leg under him in an effort to trip him. He jumped over my attempt, landed smoothly and kicked me square in the jaw with his powerful leg.

I flew (for the second time in five minutes) and hit the doctor’s granite desk.

Looking around for something to use as a weapon, my eyes caught the glimmer of a gold letter opener on top of Williams’ desk. Gavil was circling me, positioning himself for the next strike. With a well-trained flick of my wrist I threw the knife-like object directly at his chest, hoping it would find its mark.

In a blink of an eye, Gavil reached up, caught the knife in mid-flight, and in the same motion threw it right back at me. I jumped, but not fast enough to get out of the way. The weapon, thrown by this ultimate Metahuman, dug deep through my blue jeans and into the meat of my left thigh. Oh, dear God, what was happening?

I could hear sirens in the distance and knew the city fire department and police were coming, but that wasn’t going to be soon enough for me or my mom.

Williams scurried out of the room toward the elevators and yelled behind him, “Kill her. She is of no use to me now.”

Darn it, I thought. There goes evil, out the door and here I am bleeding around a six-inch gold knife stuck in my leg. If I weren’t such an optimist, I’d feel pretty screwed right about now.

I allowed myself to let out a hurt whimper. I wanted the boy to come closer to me. I wanted him to think I had given up and was resigned to dying at his hands, just as the doctor ordered. If he got close enough, I would yank the knife out of me and stab him with it.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” Gavil growled as he approached me. “You may have been the first Meta, but I am the best. My generation is far more advanced than you. I’m stronger, faster and better trained. Dr. Williams has developed an entire army of us. We are the superior race. You were just a guinea pig that escaped your cage. You’re a mutant rodent that begs to be put out of your pathetic misery.”

Rage etched across his face and spittle hung from his thin lips. He was leaning inches from my face. Allowing myself to try to sense him, I felt nothing but his raw hatred of me. He saw me as an embarrassment. How dare the doctor call me the same word he called him. I was no Meta, I was a biological mistake.

Suddenly, Gavil took hold of the knife’s shaft as it still jutted out from my leg, and twisted it, hard. I couldn’t hold it in. I screamed till my voice echoed off every corner of the room. He twisted the knife again and again ripping my wound wider and deeper.

White hot searing agony exploded from that muscle and burst throughout my body.

Gavil was grinning wickedly through his drool-filled mouth. My blood was covering his hand as he played with my pain. This wasn’t supposed to happen, I thought as shock started to set in. He was still whispering disgusting filth into my face when I felt the weight of his body suddenly gone, and a loud thump a few feet away. I was lying in a pool of my blood and more was pumping from the gaping wound, but I had just enough strength to open my eyes and see my Maze tearing that beast apart.

Chapter 53 Marco? Polo?

The blow to his head hurt much worse than he let on to Evan. But he wasn’t allowing himself to think about that. Right now he had to find mom.

He pulled up, in his mind’s eye, the blueprint of this building and zeroed in on the part where he and his siblings had been held all those years ago. He had to get to the third floor. The stairs were to his right, but he wasn’t sure he could maintain his balance for those, he was still too dizzy.

Wonder if this is what it feels like to have a concussion, Alik thought to himself. His head was pounding painfully with every beat of his heart.

He decided instead to use the elevator. Not exactly the safest thing to use in light of explosions and such, but in this case, he was sure this building wasn’t going to sustain any more damage. That wasn’t part of the plan, so the elevators should be fine.

Halfway down the hall stood the metal doors with the recognizable UP button. He pushed it and immediately one set of doors opened.

Stepping inside the vacant space, and feeling a horrible sense of déjà vu, he pushed the button labeled three and waited. As the machine climbed, Alik prayed.

A thought occurred to him. What if Williams moved his mother since their surveillance yesterday? He may have decided he didn’t want to take a chance leaving her on this campus knowing we were coming to get her.

Alik’s stomach churned painfully at the thought of not being able to find his mom, especially knowing she was hurt. All he wanted to do was have his family back. He was thinking how much had changed in the past few days as the elevator chimed and the doors opened.

The third floor had one long corridor stretching the length of the building. Across that main hallway were three other hallways. In his mind’s eye, he pulled up the level-three floor plan. There were about twenty-seven rooms in which mom could be held on this floor alone. Ugh. This could take awhile.

Alik ran down the main hallway to the farthest east corridor. Systematically, he began opening doors and running through rooms calling out “MOM!” over and over. Every room he came to looked abandoned, as if someone had moved all the equipment, files and the researchers themselves elsewhere.

Alik was working his way from east to west running down every empty hallway, opening every door and calling for his mother till his voice started to give out.

He was feeling desperation mount after each room came up just as empty as the last. By now, Alik had searched more than half the floor when he heard a muffled crashing sound coming from the far west side of the floor. He ran as fast as his still unsteady legs could carry him to try to find the source of the noise. He tried to quiet his breathing so he could listen … listen for his mother … listen through the sirens and megaphones from outside.

“Mom! Mom, it’s me, Alik! If you can hear me, make a noise! I’m trying to find you, Mom. MOM!”

One small scrapping sound is all he heard from the farthest room, and that one small sound was all he needed. He sprinted down the hall and flung the door open.

There, lying in the dark next to a toppled metal stool was his mother. She opened her eyes and blinked slowly at the light shining in from behind her son.

“Alik,” she whispered.

“Oh, Mom.” He was at her side now, trying not to burst into tears at the sight of her. She was so badly beaten that if he hadn’t known with all his heart that this was his mother, he wouldn’t have recognized her. “Mom, we have to get you out of here. I’ve called an ambulance; they’re waiting for us out front. Come on, mom … MOM!” Alik was trying not to panic as he saw his mother’s eyes roll back into her head. He watched her for a moment to be sure she was breathing. She was, but barely.

Oh dear God, please let her keep breathing. Please help me have the strength to carry her outside. Please be with us!

Alik prayed for help as he looked around the room for something with which to wrap her. She was going into shock and needed to keep her heat to maintain organ function. On the other side of the relatively empty room there was an old towel. He ran to it, shook it free of dust and returned with it to his mom. With gentle hands, he wrapped the cloth around her and lifted her small frame off the cold hard floor.

Usually lifting her wouldn’t be difficult at all. He was naturally the strongest of all three of the children. But the head injury he’d suffered when he drove the truck into the building was making him feel incredibly dizzy, nauseous and weak.

“Come on, Mom. We’re getting out of here,” Alik said, knowing his mom couldn’t hear him. He held her as gently as he could, carried her out of the room and tried to remain steady as he walked back down the west corridor to the main hallway. He kept talking to his mother as he carried her. “Evan and Meg are here too, mom. Boy, are they going to be happy to see you! We’ve been so worried about you.” Alik had been keeping his eyes on the walkway in front of them, trying to make it to the elevator. But he stole a glance down at the precious cargo in his arms as they were rounding the last corner.

Her eyes were open and she was staring up at him. “Mom? Mom, can you hear me?”

With a very small whisper his mother said, “I don’t have very much time, my sweet Ali. I’m so thankful I got to see you once more.” She winced hard and her body spasmed uncontrollably.

“Mom, we’re almost at the elevators. I’ll have you with medical help in just a few more minutes. You hang in there! You stay with me! Do you hear me? Mom!”

Her body had stopped convulsing. And now she was scary still. Alik ran with her the rest of the way to the elevator and pushed the down button. The doors opened immediately and he carried his mother inside, hitting the ground floor button with his elbow. He waited for the doors to close. “Come on, come on!” Alik begged.

Everything was moving in slow motion. The ride down to the first floor took an eternity. Alik steadied his breathing to try to calm himself and regain his focus.